Giveaway of the Day - Inca Ball

November 25, 2012

Launch into the valiant quest for the treasures of the ancient civilization in a marvelous arcade puzzle shining with nice visuals, 60 challenging levels and a variety of bonuses. Complete the game and you will get a splendid reward that’ll come in handy even if you are not in the game. The adventure requires you to use your quick wits and skill as you will need to shoot an orb into the moving chain of colored balls trying to create a sequence of spheres of the same color, which will disappear. As all the moving balls vanish, your way to the treasure room will be cleared.

This software was available as a giveaway on November 25, 2012, this giveaway is not available any more.
You can download the trial version of this software at http://www.playrix.com/games/p....

Terms and conditions

Please note that the software you download and install during the Giveaway period comes with the following important limitations:
1) No free technical support; 2) No free upgrades to future versions; 3) Strictly personal usage.

THIS SOFTWARE PRODUCT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. WITHOUT LIMITATION, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT
ALLOWABLE BY LAW, END USER ASSUMES THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND
PERFORMANCE OF THE DOWNLOADED SOFTWARE PRODUCT.

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Inca Ball is a reasonable ball popper game on the lines of the Zuma and Luxor series, with loads of power ups to keep the game interesting. What I like about this game compared to the likes of Zuma and others of this ilk (Luxor and a few others excepted because they have a similar upgrade system) is the ability to purchase nine different power ups that can help you out of sticky situations. If you haven’t got this from a previous giveaway, then I recommend getting it now. It’s a great family game that can be played any time.

Inca Ball:

Download & Installation:

In the unlikely event that you get any activity from your anti-malware programs it may be because while installing this software, the activation module phones home to the giveaway site to confirm activation (not sure of the exact process); this may set off some overly sensitive anti-malware programs. Please ensure you’ve thoroughly checked the game before reporting that it has malware because this may put off other users from downloading the program as any mention of virus immediately halves the download numbers on this site.

The site has been up since the 2nd Dec 2006 and there has never been any malware ever downloaded with any game given away, though there has been many users reporting false positives, that have been proven to be nothing more than poorly set up anti-malware programs.

The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed during the installation wizard. The C drive may be different depending upon if you have more than one hard drive installed and whether your OS is installed to the C drive or a different one like mine (which is the F drive, though I always change it to my G drive which is where I prefer to keep all of my games):

The downloaded zip file is 23.1 MB in size and unpacks to a read me, setup.gcd security file and a dual activation and set up module. The game installs to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Playrix Entertainment\Inca Ball on 64 bit

C:\Program Files\Playrix Entertainment\Inca Ball on 32 bit

There is a shortcut installed to both the desktop and the start menu/programs list; you’ll also find an uninstaller in the Start Menu/Programs folder and a link to Playrixs’ site. Look for Playrix Entertainment in your Start Menu/Programs list. The installed game takes up 52.7Mb of disk space. The game works on all my platforms (Win XP Pro 32 bit, Vista Home Premium 64 bit, Vista Home Basic 32 bit, Win 7 Pro 64 bit and Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit).

Just a note to newcomers, when the game has been installed you’ll get a pop up asking if you want a shortcut to the game giveawayoftheday placed in your favourites/bookmarks, this is quite innocuous, however beware of the Install software Informer button that’s to the left of the install bookmark button. The program (Software informer) isn’t ad-ware, it’s actually quite a useful program that informs you about updates to programs you have installed on your computer, but many users don’t like the program, so I thought it prudent to warn you, just in case you end up accidentally clicking on the button and installing the program. You can also set up a Firefox permatab from this window.

Introduction:

Inca Ball has been given away four times previously back in January 2008 where it received a positive 77% out of 422 votes and 88 comments were posted which you can read HERE. It was also give away on Oct 31 2010 where it received a positive 76% of 481 votes with 44 comments which you can read HERE a third time last year April 24th 2011 where it received 80% positive votes out of a possible 415 votes with 50 comments which can be read HERE and finally a fourth time earlier this year back in February where it received a positive 82% thumbs up vote out of 446 votes with 59 comments which you can see HERE

Developers Introduction

Inca Ball Launch into the valiant quest for the treasures of the ancient civilization in a marvellous arcade puzzle shining with nice visuals, 60 challenging levels and a variety of bonuses. Complete the game and you will get a splendid reward that’ll come in handy even if you are not in the game. The adventure requires you to use your quick wits and skill as you will need to shoot an orb into the moving chain of colored balls trying to create a sequence of spheres of the same color, which will disappear. As all the moving balls vanish, your way to the treasure room will be cleared.

The main menu contains a help file that gives you an animated run through of the various aspects of the game. This help page also appears when you first start the game. You start with 60 000 credits which you can use to purchase several of the power ups that are available. At the start of the game there are only three of these out of a total of nine available. The bomb ball costs 10 000, the chain bomb costs 20 000 and an extra life costs 40 000. Other power ups include Rain (15 000), lightning (20 000), Trident (25 000), Fireball (30 000), Firewave (30 000) and Inca Ball (40 000). These are unlocked as you progress through the levels. I think the first one is unlocked after level 4 or 5. Any power ups that you purchase are accessible from the bottom of the playing arena. You just click on the one you want to use before you shoot your next marble.

There are 60 levels available in game, each level having a different layout. The aim of the game is to destroy all the rows of marbles that are slowly moving towards a tunnel. You get successive waves of these marble ‘trains’. If you are slow to destroy any row you’ll find the next row catching up. There are several power ups that appear when you destroy marbles such as a reverse flow power up or a targeting marble. Other power ups include the stop power up, the slow down power up and the color bomb power up.

If any marbles enter the end tunnel you lose one of your three lives. However buying a new life is relatively cheap when you see how many credits you can earn from each level. So it should be fairly easy, even for a novice at this game to complete the whole 60 levels.

Inca Ball is a decent ball popper on the lines of Zuma, with loads of power ups to keep the game interesting. What I like about this game compared to the likes of Zuma and others of this ilk (Luxor and a few others excepted because they have some excellent power ups that are upgradeable) is the ability to purchase nine different power ups that can help you out of sticky situations for example If the row of marble is about to enter the final tunnel you can use one of your purchased power ups such as the chain bomb or bomb ball to destroy those marbles by clicking on the one you want (from the bottom of the arena). There are also more power ups that appear after destroying particular combinations of marbles. (Great stuff). As you would expect from any arcade game, the difficulty gets a little harder as you progress.

I’ve given Game Play and Re-Playability extra marks because I feel they are more important than most of the other categories. You can thank Mr Snoozles for the various categories.

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More Games

If today’s game doesn’t take your fancy then check out the game discussion forums and the free games synopsis. We’ve posted a couple of thousand free games over the last four years, many of which are excellent alternatives to their commercial cousins.

The Steam Thanksgiving sale is on until Monday, with 48hr sales, flash sales that last around 10 hours plus loads more on sale. Well worth checking out. You can find the sale HERE.

Check out Gamersgates offers. They are having great reductions on four games every day until January. you can find the Gamersgate site HERE and Desura

I’ve also posted several links to sites where you’ll find loads of decent game deals. Just look in the Game Discussion sticky section for the thread.

This months Alawar game is still The Curse of Montezuma (despite being on for six weeks – hopefully they will change it for another soon). for those that are new to the game giveaway project you will need Alawar’s free game box to be able to download their free monthly game. this months is an excellent match three. You can download the game box HERE.

Oh yeah, nearly forgot, you can see all of the live indie bundles that are available HERE . They don’t update it every day (Indie Gala X is showing as still live, but that ended a few days ago), still it’ll give you an idea as to what’s still available. alternatively you can visit the giveawayoftheday Game discussion forums as all bundles are detailed there as well.

Also check out the latest game available on IndieGame stand HERE. You can pay as much as you want but no less than $1. The present game has just changed to Aztaka, which is an RPG. There are several $5 bundles available from the Indie bundle site HERE, each bundle has three games. There’s quite a few decent deals over on Desura HERE

You’ll find details of all the bundles still available over in the first two pages of the game discussion forums as well as several of the main game distributors that seem to have permanent sales HERE

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Problems:

If you have any problems with the game, either installation issues or getting the game to work check out the FAQ’s section over in the Game discussion forums. you can find it HERE

If you are posting requests for help late in the day I would suggest posting in the main giveaway forums in the game Game Discussion . If you’ve installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn’t guaranteed). It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them as well.

Request for Help:

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of ‘potential’ cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

For those who haven’t had the opportunity to download this game over the past 5 years (it’s been offered here every year) by alle means give it a try. Maybe it is not appealing to all at first glance but it is quite addictive

Installed okay, activated and all, but when I ran it I was unable to enter any text in the player name area, and it seemed all the controls and buttons froze. ESC didn’t work, even CTRL-ALT-DEL didn’t work for several minutes… and then it did and I terminated the program at that point.

…………………….Moderator comment…………………..

Open up task manager and check to see how much free RAM you have. sounds like you may be running too many background programs. There are free programs such as Game booster that enable you to automatically turn off all unnecessary background programs while running a game, then switch them back on at the touch of a button. I believe the latest version of Game Booster is no longer free, but you should still be able to get earlier versions online. It works really well and has a small RAM requirement itself. Generally it can free up around 40% of your RAM.

Razer also have their own version of Game Booster which is free to previous customers. (not sure whether you can get it free if you’ve never purchased a razer product (mice, keyboards, peripherals)

Check the FAQ’s section for other possible fixes (I’ve linked to it in the problems section of my review).